Early years ,
Bihar, India|left , Oxfordshire|left Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903 in
Motihari, Bengal Presidency (now
Bihar),
British India, into what he described as a "
lower-upper-middle class" family. His great-great-grandfather Charles Blair was a wealthy slave-owning
country gentleman and
absentee owner of two
Jamaican plantations; hailing from
Dorset, he married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of
Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland. His grandfather Thomas Richard Arthur Blair was an
Anglican clergyman. Orwell's mother, Ida Mabel Blair (
née Limouzin), grew up in
Moulmein, Burma, where her French father, Francis "Frank" Limouzin was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older; and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him and Marjorie to England. In 2014 restoration work began on Orwell's birthplace and ancestral house in Motihari. In 1904, Ida settled with her children at
Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters and, apart from a brief visit in mid-1907, he did not see his father until 1912. His mother wanted him to have a
public school education, and although his family could not afford it he succeeded in winning a scholarship to Eton. Through the social connections of Ida's brother Charles Limouzin, Blair gained a scholarship to
St Cyprian's School in
Eastbourne, East Sussex. Blair hated the school and many years later wrote an essay "
Such, Such Were the Joys", published posthumously, based on his time there. At St Cyprian's, Blair first met
Cyril Connolly, who became a writer and who, as the editor of
Horizon, published several of Orwell's essays. Before the
First World War, the family moved south to
Shiplake, Oxfordshire, where Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially their daughter
Jacintha. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field. Asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." Growing up together, Buddicom and Blair became idealistic adolescent sweethearts, reading and writing poetry together, and dreaming of becoming famous writers. Blair also enjoyed shooting, fishing and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister. He came second to Connolly in the
Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships to
Wellington and
Eton. But inclusion on the Eton scholarship roll did not guarantee a place, and none was immediately available. He chose to stay at St Cyprian's until December 1916, in case a place at Eton became available. His principal tutor was
A. S. F. Gow, Fellow of
Trinity College, Cambridge, who gave him advice later in his career. and the family decided Blair should join the
Imperial Police, the precursor of the Indian Police Service. For this he had to pass an entrance examination. In December 1921, he left Eton and travelled to join his retired father, mother, and younger sister Avril, who that month had moved to 40 Stradbroke Road,
Southwold, Suffolk, the first of their four homes in the town. Blair was enrolled at a
crammer there called Craighurst, and brushed up on his Classics, English, and History. He passed the exam, coming seventh out of the 26 who passed.
Policing in Burma ; he would later acquire a
pencil moustache similar to other British officers stationed in Burma. Blair's maternal grandmother lived at
Moulmein, so he chose a posting in
Burma, then still a province of British India. In October 1922 he sailed on board SS
Herefordshire to join the
Indian Imperial Police in Burma. A month later, he arrived at
Rangoon and travelled to the police training school in
Mandalay. He was appointed an
Assistant District Superintendent (on probation) on 29 November 1922, at the pay of
Rs. 525 per month. After a short posting at
Maymyo, Burma's principal
hill station, he was posted to the frontier outpost of
Myaungmya in the
Irrawaddy Delta at the beginning of 1924. Working as an imperial police officer gave him considerable responsibility while most of his contemporaries were still at university in England. When he was posted farther east in the Delta to
Twante as a
sub-divisional police officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924, he was posted to
Syriam, closer to Rangoon. Syriam had the refinery of the
Burmah Oil Company, "the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed off by the fumes of
sulphur dioxide pouring out day and night from the stacks of the refinery". But the town was near Rangoon, a cosmopolitan seaport, and Blair went into the city as often as he could, "to browse in a bookshop; to eat well-cooked food; to get away from the boring routine of police life". In September 1925 he went to
Insein, the home of
Insein Prison. By this time, Blair had completed his training and was receiving a monthly salary of Rs. 740, including allowances. Blair recalled he faced hostility from the Burmese, "in the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves". He recalled that "I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible". In Burma, Blair acquired a reputation as an outsider. He spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-
pukka activities, such as attending the churches of the
Karen ethnic group. A colleague, Roger Beadon, recalled that Blair was fast to learn the language and that before he left Burma, "was able to speak fluently with Burmese priests in 'very high-flown Burmese. Blair made changes to his appearance in Burma that remained for the rest of his life, including adopting a
pencil moustache.
Emma Larkin writes in the introduction to
Burmese Days: While in Burma, he acquired a moustache similar to those worn by officers of the British regiments stationed there. [He] also acquired some tattoos; on each knuckle he had a small untidy blue circle. Many Burmese living in rural areas still sport tattoos like this—they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites. In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his maternal grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he was assigned to
Katha in
Upper Burma, where he contracted
dengue fever in 1927. Entitled to a
leave in England that year, he was allowed to return in July due to his illness. While on holiday with his family in
Cornwall in September 1927, he reappraised his life. Deciding against returning to Burma, he resigned from the Indian Imperial Police to become a writer, with effect from 12 March 1928. He drew on his experiences in the Burma police for the novel
Burmese Days (1934) and the essays "
A Hanging" (1931) and "
Shooting an Elephant" (1936).
London and Paris , London. In England, he settled back in the family home at
Southwold, renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an
Old Etonian dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer. In 1927 he moved to London.
Ruth Pitter, a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in
Portobello Road; a
blue plaque commemorates his residence there. Pitter's involvement in the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs. Blair's eyes". Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and ventured into the
East End of London—the first of the occasional sorties he would make intermittently over a period of five years to discover the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it. In imitation of
Jack London, whose writing he admired (particularly
The People of the Abyss), Blair started to explore the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to
Limehouse Causeway, spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's "kip". For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like a
tramp, adopting the name P.S. Burton; he recorded his experiences of the low life for use in "
The Spike", his first published essay in English, and in the second half of his first book,
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933). in the
5th arrondissement, where Blair lived in Paris In early 1928 he moved to Paris. He lived in the rue du Pot de Fer, a working class district in the
5th arrondissement. and
Le Progrès Civique (founded by the left-wing coalition
Le Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks in
Le Progrès Civique: discussing unemployment, a day in the life of a tramp, and the beggars of London, respectively. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject—at the heart of almost everything he wrote until
Homage to Catalonia." He fell seriously ill in February 1929 and was taken to the
Hôpital Cochin, a free hospital where medical students were trained. His experiences there were the basis of his essay "
How the Poor Die", published in 1946 (though he chose not to identify the hospital). Shortly afterwards, he had all his money stolen from his lodging house. Whether through necessity or to collect material, he undertook menial jobs such as dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on the
rue de Rivoli, which he later described in
Down and Out in Paris and London. In August 1929, he sent a copy of "
The Spike" to
John Middleton Murry's
New Adelphi magazine in London. The magazine was edited by
Max Plowman and
Sir Richard Rees, and Plowman accepted the work for publication.
Southwold in
Southwold. Orwell wrote ''
A Clergyman's Daughter'' (1935) in the town, basing the fictional town of Knype Hill partly on Southwold. In December 1929, after nearly two years in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house in
Southwold, a coastal town in
Suffolk, which remained his base for the next five years. The family was well established in the town, where his sister Avril ran a tea-house. He became acquainted with many local people, including Brenda Salkeld, the clergyman's daughter who worked as a gym-teacher at
St Felix Girls' School. Although Salkeld rejected his offer of marriage, she remained a friend and regular correspondent for many years. He also renewed friendships with older friends, such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life. His history in these years is marked by dualities and contrasts. There is Blair leading a respectable, outwardly eventless life at his parents' house in Southwold, writing; then in contrast, there is Blair as Burton (the name he used in his down-and-out episodes) in search of experience in the kips and spikes, in the East End, on the road, and in the hop fields of Kent. He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz, who later influenced his career. Over the next year he visited them in London, often meeting their friend Max Plowman. He also often stayed at the homes of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees, where he could "change" for his sporadic tramping expeditions. One of his jobs was domestic work at a lodgings for
half a crown (two shillings and sixpence, or one-eighth of a pound) a day. Blair now contributed regularly to
Adelphi, with "
A Hanging" appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of poverty continued, and, like the protagonist of ''
A Clergyman's Daughter, he followed the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields. He kept a diary about his experiences there. Afterwards, he lodged in the Tooley Street kip, but could not stand it for long, and with financial help from his parents moved to Windsor Street, where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appeared in the October 1931 issue of New Statesman'', whose editorial staff included his old friend Cyril Connolly. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with
Leonard Moore, who became his
literary agent in April 1932. At this time
Jonathan Cape rejected ''A Scullion's Diary
, the first version of Down and Out
. On the advice of Richard Rees, he offered it to Faber & Faber, but their editorial director, T. S. Eliot, also rejected it. Blair ended the year by deliberately getting himself arrested, so that he could experience Christmas in prison, but after he was picked up and taken to Bethnal Green police station in the East End of London the authorities did not regard his "drunk and disorderly" behaviour as imprisonable, and after two days in a cell he returned home to Southwold. While at the school he became friendly with the curate of the local parish church and became involved with activities there. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish A Scullion's Diary'' for a £40 advance, through his recently founded publishing house,
Victor Gollancz Ltd, which was an outlet for radical and socialist works. At the end of the summer term in 1932, Blair returned to Southwold, where his parents had used a legacy to buy their own home. Blair and his sister Avril spent the holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on
Burmese Days. He was also spending time with Eleanor Jacques, but her attachment to Dennis Collings remained an obstacle to his hopes of a more serious relationship. "Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in the August 1932 number of
Adelphi. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his book, now known as
Down and Out in Paris and London. He wished to publish under a different name to avoid any embarrassment to his family over his time as a "tramp". In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932), he left the choice of pseudonym to Moore and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms P.S. Burton (a name he used when tramping), Kenneth Miles, George Orwell, and H. Lewis Allways. He finally adopted the
pen name George Orwell because "It is a good round English name." The name George was inspired by the
patron saint of England, and Orwell after the
River Orwell in Suffolk which was one of Orwell's favourite locations.
Down and Out was modestly successful and was next published by
Harper & Brothers in New York. He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down
Burmese Days, mainly on the grounds of potential suits for libel, but Harper were prepared to publish it in the United States. Meanwhile, Blair started work on the novel ''
A Clergyman's Daughter, drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. Eventually in October, after sending A Clergyman's Daughter'' to Moore, he left for London to take a job that had been found for him by his aunt Nellie Limouzin.
blue plaque in
Kentish Town, London, where Orwell lived from August 1935 until January 1936 At the beginning of 1935 he had to move out of Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him a flat in Parliament Hill. ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' was published on 11 March 1935. In early 1935 Blair met his future wife
Eileen O'Shaughnessy, when his landlady, Rosalind Obermeyer, who was studying for a master's degree in psychology at
University College London, invited some of her fellow students to a party. One of these students, Elizaveta Fen, recalled Blair and his friend
Richard Rees "draped" at the fireplace, looking, she thought, "moth-eaten and prematurely aged". Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews for
The New English Weekly. In June,
Burmese Days was published and Cyril Connolly's positive review in the
New Statesman prompted Blair to re-establish contact with his old friend. In August, he moved into a flat, at 50 Lawford Road,
Kentish Town, which he shared with
Michael Sayers and
Rayner Heppenstall. The relationship was sometimes awkward and Blair and Heppenstall even came to blows, though they remained friends and later worked together on BBC broadcasts. Blair was now working on
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and also tried unsuccessfully to write a serial for the
News Chronicle. By October 1935 his flatmates had moved out and he was struggling to pay the rent on his own. He remained until the end of January 1936, when he stopped working at Booklovers' Corner. In 1980,
English Heritage honoured Orwell with a
blue plaque at his Kentish Town residence.
The Road to Wigan Pier At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating social conditions in economically depressed
Northern England. The
Depression had introduced a number of working-class writers from the North of England to the reading public. It was one of these working-class authors,
Jack Hilton, whom Orwell sought for advice. Orwell had written to Hilton seeking lodging and asking for recommendations on his route. Hilton was unable to provide him lodging, but suggested that he travel to
Wigan rather than Rochdale, "for there are the colliers and they're good stuff". On 31 January 1936, Orwell set out by public transport and on foot. Arriving in Manchester after the banks had closed, he had to stay in a common lodging-house. The next day he picked up a list of contacts sent by Richard Rees. One of these, the trade union official Frank Meade, suggested
Wigan, where Orwell spent February staying in dirty lodgings over a
tripe shop. In Wigan, he visited many homes to see how people lived, went down
Bryn Hall coal mine, and used the
local public library to consult public health records and reports on working conditions in mines. During this time, he was distracted by concerns about style and possible libel in
Keep the Aspidistra Flying. He made a quick visit to
Liverpool and during March, stayed in south Yorkshire, spending time in
Sheffield and
Barnsley. As well as visiting mines, including
Grimethorpe, and observing social conditions, he attended meetings of the Communist Party and of
Oswald Mosley ("his speech the usual claptrap—The blame for everything was put upon mysterious international gangs of Jews") where he saw the tactics of the
Blackshirts. He also made visits to his sister at
Headingley, during which he visited the
Brontë Parsonage at
Haworth. is named after Orwell. , Orwell's residence 1936–1940 Orwell needed somewhere he could concentrate on writing his book, and once again help was provided by Aunt Nellie, who was living at
Wallington, Hertfordshire, in a very small 16th-century cottage called the "Stores". Orwell took over the tenancy and moved in on 2 April 1936. He started work on
The Road to Wigan Pier by the end of April, but also spent hours working on the garden, planting a rose garden which is still extant, and revealing four years later that "outside my work the thing I care most about is gardening, especially vegetable gardening". He also tested the possibility of reopening the Stores as a village shop.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying was published by Gollancz on 20 April 1936. On 4 August, Orwell gave a talk at the Adelphi Summer School held at
Langham, entitled
An Outsider Sees the Distressed Areas; others who spoke at the school included
John Strachey,
Max Plowman,
Karl Polanyi and
Reinhold Niebuhr. The result of his journeys through the north was
The Road to Wigan Pier, published by Gollancz for the
Left Book Club in 1937. The first half of the book documents his social investigations of
Lancashire and
Yorkshire, including an evocative description of working life in the coal mines. The second half is a long essay on his upbringing and the development of his political conscience, which includes an argument for socialism. Gollancz feared the second half would offend readers and added a disculpatory preface to the book while Orwell was in Spain. Orwell's research for
The Road to Wigan Pier led to him being placed under surveillance by the
Special Branch from 1936. Orwell married O'Shaughnessy on 9 June 1936. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned by
Francisco Franco's military uprising, Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the
Spanish Civil War on
the Republican side. Under the erroneous impression that he needed papers from some left-wing organisation to cross the frontier, on
John Strachey's recommendation he applied unsuccessfully to
Harry Pollitt, leader of the
British Communist Party. Pollitt was suspicious of Orwell's political reliability; he asked him whether he would undertake to join the
International Brigades and advised him to get a safe-conduct from the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Not wishing to commit himself until he had seen the situation
in situ, Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to
John McNair in Barcelona.
Spanish Civil War Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December 1936, dining with
Henry Miller in Paris on the way. Miller told Orwell that going to fight in the Civil War out of some sense of obligation or guilt was "sheer stupidity" and that the Englishman's ideas "about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney". A few days later in
Barcelona, Orwell met John McNair of the
Independent Labour Party (ILP) Office. The
Republican government was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims, including the
Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), the
anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the
Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (a wing of the
Spanish Communist Party). Orwell was at first exasperated by this "kaleidoscope" of political parties and trade unions. After a time at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quiet
Aragon Front under
Georges Kopp. By January 1937 he was at
Alcubierre above sea level, in the depth of winter. There was very little military action and Orwell was shocked by the lack of munitions, food and firewood as well as other extreme deprivations. With his Cadet Corps and police training, Orwell was quickly made a corporal. On the arrival of a British
ILP Contingent about three weeks later, Orwell and the other English militiaman, Williams, were sent with them to
Monte Oscuro and on to
Huesca. Meanwhile, back in England, Eileen had been handling the issues relating to the publication of
The Road to Wigan Pier before setting out for Spain herself, leaving Nellie Limouzin to look after The Stores. Eileen volunteered for a post in John McNair's office and with the help of Georges Kopp paid visits to her husband, bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars. Orwell had to spend some days in hospital with a poisoned hand and had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in a night attack on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position. In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. During the
Barcelona May Days Orwell was caught up in the factional fighting. He spent much of the time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encountered
Jon Kimche from his Hampstead days during the stay. The subsequent campaign of lies and distortion carried out by the Communist press, in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on Orwell. Instead of joining the International Brigades as he had intended, he decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the May fighting was over, he was approached by a Communist friend who asked if he still intended transferring to the International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, because according to the Communist press he was a fascist. marking where Orwell received treatment at the Hospital Santa Maria de Lleida for his bullet wound to the neck After his return to the front, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. At , Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fighters and had been warned against standing against the trench parapet. Unable to speak, and with blood pouring from his mouth, Orwell was carried on a stretcher to
Siétamo, loaded on an ambulance and sent to hospital in
Lleida. He recovered sufficiently to get up and on 27 May 1937 was sent on to
Tarragona and two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin and his voice was barely audible. It had been such a clean shot that the wound immediately went through the process of
cauterisation. He received
electrotherapy treatment and was declared medically unfit for service. By the middle of June, the political situation in Barcelona had deteriorated and the POUM—painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a
Trotskyist organisation—was outlawed and under attack. Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were in hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to lie low, although they broke cover to try to help Kopp. They finally escaped from Spain by train. In the first week of July 1937 Orwell arrived back at Wallington; on 13 July 1937 a deposition was presented to the Tribunal for Espionage and High Treason in
Valencia, charging the Orwells with "rabid Trotskyism", and being agents of the POUM. The trial of the leaders of the POUM and of Orwell (in his absence) took place in Barcelona in October and November 1938. Observing events from French Morocco, Orwell wrote that they were "only a by-product of the
Russian Trotskyist trials and from the start every kind of lie, including flagrant absurdities, has been circulated in the Communist press". Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War gave rise to
Homage to Catalonia (1938). In his book,
The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War, Giles Tremlett writes that according to Soviet files, Orwell and his wife Eileen were spied on in Barcelona in May 1937.
Rest and recuperation , London Orwell returned to England in June 1937, and stayed at the O'Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. He found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour, but praised the book
Red Spanish Notebook: the first six months of revolution and the civil war by Juan Ramón Breá and
Mary Stanley Low in a review for
Time and Tide magazine.
Kingsley Martin rejected two of Orwell's works and Gollancz was equally cautious. At the same time, the communist
Daily Worker was running an attack on
The Road to Wigan Pier, taking out of context Orwell writing that "the working classes smell"; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening libel action brought a stop to this. Orwell was also able to find a more sympathetic publisher for his views in
Fredric Warburg of Secker & Warburg. Orwell returned to Wallington, which he found in disarray after his absence. He acquired goats, a cockerel (rooster) he called
Henry Ford and a poodle puppy he called
Marx; and settled down to animal husbandry and writing
Homage to Catalonia. There were thoughts of going to India to work on
The Pioneer, a newspaper in
Lucknow, but by March 1938 Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was admitted to
Preston Hall Sanatorium at
Aylesford, Kent, a
Royal British Legion Industries hospital for ex-servicemen to which his brother-in-law Laurence O'Shaughnessy was attached. He was thought initially to be suffering from
tuberculosis and stayed in the sanatorium until September.
Homage to Catalonia was published in London by
Secker & Warburg and was a commercial flop; it re-emerged in the 1950s, following on the success of Orwell's later books. The novelist
L.H. Myers secretly funded a trip to
French Morocco for half a year for Orwell to avoid the English winter and recover his health. The Orwells set out in September 1938 via
Gibraltar and
Tangier to avoid
Spanish Morocco and arrived at
Marrakesh. They rented a villa on the road to
Casablanca and during that time Orwell wrote
Coming Up for Air. They arrived back in England on 30 March 1939 and
Coming Up for Air was published in June. Orwell spent time in Wallington and Southwold working on
an essay about
Charles Dickens. In June 1939, Orwell's father died.
Second World War and Animal Farm ,
Bloomsbury, London, Orwell wrote for
Horizon magazine (co-founded by
Stephen Spender) from 1940 At the outbreak of the
Second World War, Orwell's wife Eileen started working in the Censorship Department of the
Ministry of Information in central London, staying during the week with her family in
Greenwich. Orwell submitted his name to the Central Register for war work, but nothing transpired. He returned to Wallington, and in late 1939 he wrote material for his first collection of essays,
Inside the Whale. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for
The Listener,
Time and Tide and
New Adelphi. On 29 March 1940 his long association with
Tribune began with a review of a sergeant's account of
Napoleon's
retreat from Moscow. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's
Horizon appeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work and new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street,
Marylebone. It was the time of the
Dunkirk evacuation, and the death in
Flanders of Eileen's brother Laurence O'Shaughnessy caused her considerable grief and long-term depression. Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board in June, but soon joined the
Home Guard. He shared
Tom Wintringham's socialist vision for the Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia. His lecture notes for instructing platoon members include advice on street fighting, field fortifications, and the use of
mortars. Sergeant Orwell recruited
Fredric Warburg to his unit. During the
Battle of Britain he spent weekends with Warburg and his new
Zionist friend,
Tosco Fyvel, at Warburg's house at
Twyford, Berkshire. At Wallington he worked on "
England Your England" and in London wrote reviews for periodicals. Visiting Eileen's family in Greenwich brought him face-to-face with the effects of
the German Blitz bombings. In 1940 he first worked for the
BBC as a producer on their Indian Section, while the broadcaster and writer
Venu Chitale was his secretary. In mid-1940, Warburg, Fyvel and Orwell planned
Searchlight Books. Eleven volumes eventually appeared, of which Orwell's
The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius, published in February 1941, was the first. Early in 1941 he began to write for the American
Partisan Review which linked Orwell with the
New York Intellectuals who were also anti-Stalinist, and contributed to the Gollancz anthology
The Betrayal of the Left, written in the light of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. He applied unsuccessfully for a job at the
Air Ministry. Meanwhile, he was still writing reviews of books and plays and met the novelist
Anthony Powell. He took part in radio broadcasts for the Eastern Service of the BBC. In March the Orwells moved to a seventh-floor flat at Langford Court,
St John's Wood, while at Wallington Orwell was "
digging for victory" by planting potatoes. {{Blockquote| One could not have a better example of the moral and emotional shallowness of our time, than the fact that we are now all more or less pro Stalin. This disgusting murderer is temporarily on our side, and so the purges, etc., are suddenly forgotten. In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full-time by the BBC's Eastern Service. He supervised cultural broadcasts to India, to counter propaganda from
Nazi Germany designed to undermine imperial links. At the end of August he had a dinner with
H. G. Wells which degenerated into a row because Wells had taken offence at observations Orwell made about him in a
Horizon article. This meeting was dramatised in the BBC2 series
Encounters in 1992. In October Orwell had a bout of
bronchitis; the illness recurred frequently.
David Astor was looking for a provocative contributor for
The Observer Sunday newspaper, and invited Orwell to write for him; the first article appeared in March 1942. In early 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work at the
Ministry of Food, and in mid-1942 the Orwells moved to a larger flat, 10a Mortimer Crescent in
Maida Vale/
Kilburn. and other broadcasts, but no recordings are known to survive. At the BBC, Orwell introduced
Voice, a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends, particularly on the political left. Late in 1942 he started writing regularly for the left-wing weekly
Tribune directed by
Labour MPs
Aneurin Bevan and
George Strauss. In March 1943, Orwell's mother died, and around this time he told Moore he was starting work on a book, which turned out to be
Animal Farm. In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC following a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts, but he was also keen to concentrate on writing
Animal Farm. On 24 November 1943, six days before his last day of service, his adaptation of the
fairy tale,
Hans Christian Andersen's ''
The Emperor's New Clothes was broadcast. It was a genre in which he was greatly interested and which appeared on Animal Farm''s title page. He resigned from the Home Guard on medical grounds. In November 1943, Orwell was appointed literary editor at
Tribune, where his assistant was his friend
Jon Kimche. Orwell was on the staff until early 1945, writing over 80 book reviews, and on 3 December 1943 started his regular personal column "
As I Please". He was still writing reviews for other magazines, including
Partisan Review,
Horizon, and the New York
Nation. By April 1944
Animal Farm was ready for publication. Gollancz refused to publish it, considering it an attack on the
regime of the Soviet Union, a crucial ally in the war. A similar fate was met from other publishers, including
T. S. Eliot at
Faber & Faber, until
Jonathan Cape agreed to take it. Orwell and Eileen wanted children, but he was sterile and she may also have been infertile due to uterine cancer. then a doctor in
Newcastle upon Tyne. In June a
V-1 flying bomb struck Mortimer Crescent and the Orwells had to find somewhere else to live. Orwell had to scrabble around in the rubble for his books, which he had finally managed to transfer from Wallington, carting them away in a wheelbarrow. Another blow was Cape's reversal of his plan to publish
Animal Farm. The decision followed his visit to
Peter Smollett, an official at the
Ministry of Information, who was later identified as a Soviet agent. The Orwells spent time in the North East, near
Carlton, County Durham, dealing with the adoption of a boy whom they named
Richard Horatio Blair. By September 1944 they had set up home in
Islington, at 27b
Canonbury Square. Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up her work at the Ministry of Food to look after her family.
Secker & Warburg had agreed to publish
Animal Farm, planned for the following March, although it did not appear in print until August 1945. By February 1945 David Astor had invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for
The Observer. He went to liberated Paris, then to Germany and Austria, to cities including
Cologne and
Stuttgart. He was never in the front line, under fire, but followed the troops closely, "sometimes entering a captured town within a day of its fall while dead bodies lay in the streets". Some of his reports were published in the
Manchester Evening News. While he was there, Eileen went into hospital for a
hysterectomy. She had not given Orwell much notice about the operation because of worries about the cost, and because she expected to make a speedy recovery; however she died on 29 March 1945 of an allergic reaction to the anaesthetic she was given. It was expected that he would give up his nine-month-old adopted son, but he did not.
Jura and Nineteen Eighty-Four Animal Farm had particular resonance in the post-war climate and its worldwide success made Orwell a sought-after figure. For the next four years, Orwell mixed journalistic work—mainly for
Tribune,
The Observer and the
Manchester Evening News, though he also contributed to many small-circulation political and
literary magazines—with writing his best-known work,
Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in 1949. He was a leading figure in the so-called Shanghai Club (named after a restaurant in Soho) of left-leaning and émigré journalists, among them
E. H. Carr,
Sebastian Haffner,
Isaac Deutscher,
Barbara Ward and
Jon Kimche. farmhouse on the Isle of
Jura, Scotland. Orwell completed
Nineteen Eighty-Four while living here. In the year following Eileen's death he published around 130 articles and a selection of his
Critical Essays, while remaining active in various political lobbying campaigns. He employed a housekeeper, Susan Watson, to look after his adopted son at the
Islington flat, which visitors now described as "bleak". In September he spent a fortnight on the island of
Jura in the
Inner Hebrides and saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of London literary life. David Astor was instrumental in arranging a place for Orwell on Jura. Astor's family owned Scottish estates in the area and a fellow Old Etonian, Robin Fletcher, had a property on the island. In late 1945 and early 1946 Orwell made several hopeless and unwelcome marriage proposals to younger women, including
Celia Kirwan; Ann Popham, who happened to live in the same block of flats; and
Sonia Brownell, one of Connolly's coterie at the
Horizon office. Orwell suffered a tubercular
haemorrhage in February 1946 but disguised his illness. In 1945 or early 1946, while still living at Canonbury Square, Orwell wrote an article on "British Cookery", complete with recipes, commissioned by the
British Council. Given the post-war shortages, both parties agreed not to publish it. His sister Marjorie died in May. On 22 May 1946, Orwell set off with his two-year-old son, who he treated as a mini-adult, Conditions at the farmhouse were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving the place appealed to Orwell. His son later learned that Orwell was afraid of passing tuberculosis on to him through hugging or kissing, and worried that this might interfere with their ability to bond. Orwell left London for Jura on 10 April 1947. Back on Jura he worked on
Nineteen Eighty-Four. During that time his sister's family visited, and Orwell led a disastrous boating expedition, on 19 August, which nearly led to loss of life whilst trying to cross the notorious
Gulf of Corryvreckan and gave him a soaking which was not good for his health. In December a chest specialist was summoned from Glasgow who pronounced Orwell seriously ill, and a week before Christmas 1947 he was in
Hairmyres Hospital.
Tuberculosis was diagnosed and the request for permission to import the new medicine
streptomycin to treat Orwell went as far as
Aneurin Bevan, then Minister of Health.
David Astor helped with supply and payment and Orwell began his course of streptomycin on 19 or 20 February 1948. By the end of July 1948 Orwell was able to return to Jura and by December he had finished the manuscript of
Nineteen Eighty-Four. In January 1949, in a very weak condition, he set off for a sanatorium at
Cranham, Gloucestershire. However, streptomycin could not be continued, as he developed
toxic epidermal necrolysis, a rare side effect. '' cartoon strips produced for the Cold War anti-communist department of the British Foreign Office, the
Information Research Department (IRD) The sanatorium at Cranham consisted of a series of small wooden chalets or huts in a remote part of the
Cotswolds near
Stroud. Visitors were shocked by Orwell's appearance and concerned by the shortcomings and ineffectiveness of the treatment. Friends were worried about his finances, but by now he was comparatively well off. He was writing to many of his friends, including Jacintha Buddicom, who had "rediscovered" him. In March 1949 he was visited by Celia Kirwan, who had just started working for a
Foreign Office unit, the
Information Research Department (IRD), set up by the
Labour government to publish
anti-communist propaganda; Orwell gave her a list of people he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings.
Orwell's list, not published until 2003, consisted mainly of writers, and some actors and Labour MPs. To further promote
Animal Farm, the IRD commissioned cartoon strips, drawn by
Norman Pett, to be placed in newspapers across the globe. Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and improved slightly. This repeat dose of streptomycin, especially after the side effect had been noticed, has been called "ill-advised".
Final months and death in London, where Orwell died Orwell's health continued to decline. In mid-1949, he
courted Sonia Brownell, believed to be the model for
Julia, the heroine of
Nineteen Eighty-Four, and they announced their engagement in September. Shortly afterwards he was removed to
University College Hospital in London. Brownell took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended him diligently in the hospital. Friends of Orwell stated that Brownell helped him through the painful last months of his life and, according to
Anthony Powell, cheered Orwell up greatly. However, others have argued that she may have been attracted to him primarily because of his fame. Further meetings were held with his accountant, at which Harrison and the Blairs were confirmed as directors of the company. churchyard,
Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire Orwell had requested to be buried "according to the rites of the
Church of England, in the nearest convenient cemetery". The graveyards in central London had no space, and so in an effort to ensure his last wishes could be fulfilled, his widow appealed to his friends to see whether any of them knew of a church with space in its graveyard. David Astor arranged for Orwell to be interred in the churchyard of
All Saints' Church, Sutton Courtenay, on 26 January 1950. The funeral was organised by Anthony Powell and Malcolm Muggeridge. Powell chose the hymns: "
All people that on earth do dwell", "
Guide me, O thou great Redeemer" and "Ten thousand times ten thousand". Orwell's adopted son,
Richard Horatio Blair, was brought up by Orwell's sister Avril, his legal guardian, and her husband, Bill Dunn. In 1979, Sonia Brownell brought a
High Court action against Harrison when he declared an intention to subdivide his 25 per cent share of the company between his three children. For Sonia, the consequence of this manoeuvre would have made getting overall control of the company three times more difficult. She was considered to have a strong case, but was becoming increasingly ill and eventually was persuaded to settle out of court on 2 November 1980. She died on 11 December 1980, aged 62. ==Writing==